Your connection with Grad studies at Queen's

Higher Education Humour!

While the tradition of oral storytelling has been replaced by the email forward or Facebook message, the idea remains the same. We pass down stories from generation to generation, from postdocs to PhDs to Masters students and onwards. And now those stories take the form of websites, blogposts and cats doing silly things.

I’m going to end the year with some of my favourite funny reads. It’s a stressful time of the semester, and most people have exams and assignments and projects to finish. If you’re really lucky, you also have a bunch to mark before you can leave too! Yay!

And so, in the spirit of the season, I’m going to share some of my favourite links with you to try and lighten that load.

Those of us in clinical research know the mantra of: “a randomized trial is the highest form of evidence.” However, as this article points out, not all hypotheses need clinical trials. The Christmas issues of the BMJ (British Medical Journal) and CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) often contain offbeat articles, such as this one, titled “How to ensure that you never get asked to present at rounds again.”

A handy FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) section on the “Snake Fight” portion of your thesis defense. I remember mine … I distracted the snake with the Special Limited Edition Hi Def Extended Directors Cut of Lord of the Rings. 27 hours later and it was too tired to fight.

If you’re in graduate school, you either read this regularly, or you have this sent to you. Jorge Cham does a great job of capturing the graduate school experience – be that how our productivity changes over the week, if you’re playing seminar bingo, or the Ode to a Cookie.